"It has seemed to us that the whole Democratic campaign was a series of blunders. The party nominated Gen. HANCOCK--a good man, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds. But HANCOCK is not TILDEN."--The Sun.

The
featured cartoon’s caption reveals the negative reaction of Charles A.
Dana, editor and publisher of the New York Sun, to Democratic
losses in the "October" states
of Ohio and Indiana.He laments that the 1880 Democratic presidential candidate,
Winfield Hancock, is not as talented as the party’s 1876
standard-bearer, Samuel J. Tilden.The image shows Dana as the setting sun, a pun on the name of his
morning newspaper, behind a body of water reflecting the prediction:“We Are Beaten.”

Charles Anderson Dana was born
in 1819 in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, where he grew up in poverty.He entered Harvard in 1839, but inadequate financial resources
forced him to drop out after one year.While at Harvard, he met George Ripley, and two years later
joined Ripley’s Massachusetts commune, Brook Farm, which promoted
cooperative economics and harmonious social relations.In 1845, Dana became a primary contributor to Brook Farm’s
publication, The Harbinger, and then joined the staff of the New
York Tribune the following year.In 1848, Dana covered the largely failed liberal revolutions
in Europe, and then returned the next spring to become managing editor
of the Tribune, a position he held for thirteen years.During the 1850s, he hired Karl Marx as a regular contributor to
the Tribune, and published The Household Book of Poetry
(1857) and the first of 16 volumes of the American Cyclopaedia
(1858).

Friction arose between Dana and
the Tribune’s publisher and senior editor, Horace Greeley, due to the
latter’s resentment of Dana’s unilateral decisions made during
Greeley’s long absences.The
secession crisis during the winter of 1860-1861 heightened tensions
further between the two men, as Greeley held out hope for compromise
while Dana declared secession to be unconstitutional and a provocation
for war.On June 26, 1861,
as the Confederate Congress prepared to convene in Richmond, Virginia,
the next month, Dana began running a prominent editorial-page slogan
urging Union troops:“The
Nation’s War-Cry!Forward
to Richmond!”Greeley was
at home recuperating from a knee injury, but he allowed the headline to
continue running through July 4.When
the Union’s attempt to advance toward Richmond met with embarrassing
failure later that month at the
First Battle of Bull Run,
many commentators blamed the Tribune, while Greeley blamed Dana.In late March 1862, when Greeley informed the newspaper’s
stockholders that they would have to choose between him and his managing
editor, Dana resigned.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
immediately hired Dana, ostensibly dispatching him to investigate
payroll services in the Western Theatre, but secretly instructing him to
determine if reports of General Ulysses S. Grant’s intoxication were
true.Dana was impressed by
Grant’s modesty, honesty, and fairness, and insisted that the
general’s binge drinking was infrequent and did not affect his
military duties.In 1863,
Dana was named assistant secretary of war, and thereafter served as a
mediator between Stanton, Grant, and President Abraham Lincoln.

At the end of the Civil War in
April 1865, Dana accepted a position as editor of the Chicago
Republican, where he introduced short paragraphs and humorous
observations.The reason
for his departure from the newspaper in May 1866 was disputed, with
friends blaming the journal’s bad financial state, and critics citing
the editor’s desire for a lucrative patronage appointment with the New
York Port Authority.In
1867, with financial backing from wealthy Chicago friends, Dana
purchased the New York Sun and the Associated Press wire service.To balance the interests of the newspaper’s Republican
stockholders with its readership consisting mainly of working-class
Democrats, Dana announced that the Sun’s editorial stance would
be independent of party.Yet,
his editorials consistently criticized the Grant administration
(1869-1877), and increasingly moved toward the Democratic camp.

From 1870 until 1884, the Sun
had the highest circulation among the city’s morning newspapers.The journal covered labor issues extensively, and Dana’s
editorials encouraged workers to establish cooperative ventures for
housing and education.In
addition, the paper’s reporters covered a wide array of current
events, including what became known as “human interest” stories, and
set standards that other journalists tried to emulate.Dana is still widely quoted today for his definition of news:“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, but when a man bites
a dog, that is news.”

In 1884, Dana used his
editorials to attack Governor Grover Cleveland of New York, the
Democratic presidential nominee, and to support Benjamin Butler, the
Greenback-Labor nominee.Dana
had failed to anticipate both his readership’s loyalty to the
Democratic Party and competition from Joseph Pulitzer's New York
World, which resulted in a dramatic 43% decline in the Sun’s
circulation from 1884 to 1886.Dana
mortgaged his paper to buy new presses and doubled its length to eight
pages (the same as the World’s).He essentially conceded the loss of his working-class readership
to the World, but added a new audience by backing the policies of
pro-business Democrats.The changed look and stance of the Sun halted its decline and sparked a limited increase in circulation,
but the
newspaper would never again be the formidable journalistic giant that it
was in the 1870s.Dana
broke with the Democratic Party again in 1896 when it nominated William
Jennings Bryan for president; this time, he endorsed the Republican
candidate, William McKinley.Dana
died the next year in New York City.